Disease, accidents, birth defects, battlefield injuries and a variety of other incidents cause human bodies to become disfigured or distorted. In many of those situations, the victim's body may still be able to function physically to a greater or lesser degree. However, many times the victim thereof suffers severe physiological and psychological trauma associated therewith due to perceived inferiority relative to surrounding members of society resulting from the real or imagined obviousness of the deformity.
The trauma is generally reinforced on a daily basis when the victim dons his or her attire only to be reminded of the unnatural draping of the clothing in the proximity of the missing or distorted body mass. In an attempt to compensate for the perceived inferiority, the victim sometimes physically responds in a manner which might tend to conceal or camouflage the disfigurement. For example, a female victim may tend to hunch her shoulders toward the site of a mastectomy surgery.
In order to alleviate the trauma that results from such missing or distorted human body mass, a variety of prosthetic devices have been utilized in an attempt to minimize the obvious anomaly associated therewith.
One approach has been to form a single lump of resilient material which approximates the original size, shape and weight of the missing body mass. Usually, some type of harness is then used to secure and confine the prosthesis to the proximity of the deformity. Unfortunately, such a lump of resilient material is generally impervious to air flow and, as a result, is not conducive to ventilation of the surface of skin covered by the prosthesis or for conveying away body moisture that may accumulate between the lump and the underlying body surfaces. For this and other reasons, such devices are often uncomfortable to wear.
Further, the mass of the single lump of material has certain inertial properties of its own which are separate and apart from those of the body structure located nearby. As a result, the prosthesis may begin to work loose, flop or bounce when the victim ambulates, or may otherwise become disoriented relative to the deformity which it was designed to conceal. Then, instead of enjoying the psychological security desired, the victim may experience further embarrassment because, not only is the deformity then apparent, but the unsuccessful attempt to cover the defect has been exposed by the obvious presence of the misplaced artifice.
Finally, this type of prosthesis is not usually adapted for frequent subjection to normal and customary cleaning and laundering practices for periodic sanitation maintenance purposes.
Another approach sometimes used to try to camouflage a missing or deformed body mass has been to form layers of materials to reconstruct the missing body profile and resilience characteristics, some of which attempts include inflatable pockets for in situ adjustment of size and shape. Although some of these devices do provide a lighter, more comfortable prosthesis, many still retain and exhibit the same undesirable characteristics discussed above, particularly with regard to discomfort caused by accumulated body moisture and misalignment of the prosthesis with other normal body profile lines during physical activity.
It is further noted that such devices are either constructed of pieces that are not interconnected in which case the pieces are displaced during laundering or the like so that the device loses its shape or alternatively are interconnected by tight stitching or the like that prevents movement of one piece relative to another such that the prosthesis appears very stiff and unnatural.
Most of the prior art devices are deficient in providing a complete profile correction of the missing or deformed body mass, expensive to purchase, difficult to maintain, difficult to put on and take off (especially where the prosthesis must encircle a body part), and incapable of frequent exposure to conventional cleaning or laundering environments.